FAAE Committee Report

An Opportunity for Global Leadership: Canada and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

Supplementary Opinion from the New Democratic Party of Canada

The Committee’s study on Canada and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda was proposed by the New Democratic Party. We were pleased that this was the first study to be adopted by the committee in the 42^nd Parliament – an action which, we believe, reflects the importance of this issue to Canadians.

The Committee heard from many witnesses over the course of the study, including leaders in the WPS field in Canada and internationally. We thank the witnesses for sharing their expertise with the Committee and we hope their recommendations will be taken seriously by the Government of Canada as it designs a new, ambitious, and well-funded National Action Plan.

Unfortunately, we believe the final recommendations of the Committee’s report do not sufficiently reflect the suggestions from the many expert witnesses, especially with regard to outlining the concrete steps Canada must do to become a global leader in Women, Peace, and Security. We therefore outline our position and recommendations in this supplementary report. 

Over the last decade, the issue of women, peace and security was largely neglected by the Canadian government. Reports on Canada’s National Action Plan were frequently late, and the Agenda was underfunded. We note that the scarcity of funds has been one of the key challenges of implementing the WPS agenda at both the national and global level. We believe this must change.

While we are generally in agreement with the Committee’s report and many of its recommendations, we remain concerned with regard to the inadequate attention paid to the important issue of funding from the Canadian government. Given the strong evidence the Committee heard about the effectiveness of the WPS agenda, we believe the Committee’s recommendations should be far more ambitious with regard to long-term, predictable and accessible funding for implementation of this agenda.

Rhetoric is useless without clear and specific targets. If Canada is to make the WPS Agenda a core goal of Canadian foreign policy, it must provide a dedicated budget for Canada’s National Action Plan, including funds for staff, consultations, outreach, Canadian capacity building and knowledge management. The Committee report does not sufficiently reflect this need, despite the fact that this point was articulated by multiple witnesses over the course of the study.

Recommendation 12 does not outright ask the Government of Canada to fund the Global Acceleration Instrument on Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian engagement. This is a pooled UN trust fund that has been established with donors, the UN and civil society. We urge Canada to immediately contribute to this Instrument, as several of its international peers have already done.

The New Democratic Party believes Recommendation 14 is unnecessarily weak. We believe Canada must allocate at least 15% of the international assistance it provides for peace and security programming to projects that have the advancement of gender equality and women’s empowerment as their primary objective. The Committee was urged by several witnesses to prioritize this target, and should have done so.

The 15% target was proposed by the UN Secretary General in the Secretary-General’s Seven-Point Action Plan on Gender Responsive Peacebuilding in 2010, yet this target remains largely unmet. The New Democratic Party believes that Canada should support efforts by the United Nations to move this Agenda forward. At a time when the Government of Canada is expressing renewed support for the United Nations and multilateralism, and campaigning for a temporary seat on the UN Security Council, this seems to us especially important.

We cannot emphasize enough the words of Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Women: “It is a continuing frustration that the level of rhetoric for gender equality, and the level of ambition expressed, is not evidenced in financing. We must not miss the chance to achieve radical change – moving from treating women’s issues as side issues or peripheral to the business of the UN, to making women and girls the missing answer to creating a peaceful and just world.”[1]

We urge the Canadian government to demonstrate it believes in the power of engaging women in peace and security, by walking the talk, and dedicating the political and financial support to make Canada a leader in implementing the WPS Agenda.